Mr. ANDERSON. The only thing I was trying to get at was the question whether in drafting that language it was in your mind that the continuance of ownership by the individual defendants of stock in stockyards was a practice which might be permitted without injury to the public welfare, and whether you intended eventually to eliminate it altogether.

Attorney General PALMER. That is what the intention is, to eliminate it altogether.

Mr. ANDERSON. I can understand that it might be difficult to do it immediately.

Attorney General PALMER. I think it is the purpose of this exception to enable us to get by the period when it would be difficult to eliminate them absolutely.

Mr. ANDERSON. As to paragraph 15 there has been some discussion. That paragraph, I think you said, had the effect of saving the right of the Government to proceed against any of the defendants for violation of the antitrust act with reference to matters or articles not specifically mentioned in the decree. That has raised in my mind and, I think, in the minds of others, whether or not the decree is final as to the matters dealt with in it. For instance, do you construe that language in such a way that you could not open for a further hearing or determination of the question any matter which is dealt with in this decree? I mean by that, does your specification of the fact that you have a right to go into the question of poultry, butter, and eggs negative your power to ask further relief with respect to matters which are specifically entered in the decree?

Attorney General PALMER. Clearly not; because in section 18 the court particularly reserves that power [reading]:

That jurisdiction of this cause be, and is hereby, retained by this court for the purpose of taking such other action or adding at the foot of this decree such other relief, if any, as may become necessary or appropriate for the carrying out and enforcement of this decree

That contemplates matter specifically mentioned in the decree. [Continuing reading:]

and for the purpose of entertaining at any time hereafter any application which the parties may make with respect to this decree.

I think that is a pretty wide-open door.

Mr. ANDERSON. I wanted to get your view on that; that is all.

In paragraph 17 was there any particular reason for selecting the date Ocober 1, 1919, as the date after which all sales and transfers of property are to be subject to review by the court?

Attorney General PALMER. No; that was an arbitrary date fixed at that time, because it was approximately the date of the first conference between the defendants and the Department of Justice, and I thought everything should relate to the beginning, when I laid down the Government's demand, in which they finally acquiesced. Mr. ANDERSON. Under the decree it would not be possible, I take it, to go back to any transaction which involved the sale of property prior to October 1?

Attorney General PALMER. Yes, sir; I think so, for certain purposes. You have read article 16 of the decree? It says:

For the further purpose of enabling the Attorney General to determine and advise the court whether any leases, contracts, or arrangements concerning their, or any of their, distributing systems made or entered into by the defendants, or any of them prior to the entry of this decree, and in force on the day when it shall be entered, are

in violation of the terms thereof, then, in the event that the Attorney General in writing notifies the defendant or defendants concerned with respect to such alleged violation, reciting in reasonably specific terms the nature thereof, the corporation defendants are hereby directed to make full and complete discovery to the petitioner with respect thereto, etc.

Mr. ANDERSON. Is that controlled by the date October 1, or is it not?

Attorney General PALMER. No; certainly not.

Mr. ANDERSON. Of course, if section 16 is controlled by the date October 1, it means an entirely different thing from what it would mean if it were wide open.

Attorney General PALMER. The sixteenth section is not controlled by the date October 1, because the purposes for which discovery may be made are specifically set forth. It specifically requires that the discovery be made for the purpose of enabling the Attorney General to determine and advise the court whether any leases, contracts, or arrangements, etc., made or entered into by the defendants, or any of them, prior to the entry of this decree are in violation of its spirit or its terms.

Mr. ANDERSON. Leaving the subject of the decree for a moment, I understood you to say in answer to a question by Mr. Voigt that it was your opinion, after your investigation of this matter, that there was a violation of the Sherman antitrust law committed by these defendants. Am I right about that?

Attorney General PALMER. Well, that is fairly accurate; I repeated that several times.

Mr. ANDERSON. I believe what was in Mr. Voigt's mind was this: If these defendants at the time the suit was commenced, or at the time you entered into negotiations with them, were in combination or engaged in restraints of trade in violation of the antitrust law, why was it not possible to proceed under the injunction of 1903?

Attorney General PALMER. Oh, that was an injunction which simply applied to the principal defendants and which applied only to their combination in the matter of distribution. It was a very limited decree.

Mr. ANDERSON. But to the extent that it was violated by the defendants they ought to have been punished for the violation of it? Attorney General PALMER. Well, I wanted to get a lot more than that for the people. I could not have gotten any of the things that are in this decree by going into court and asking a decree of contempt for violation of the 1903 decree.

I believe, Mr. Anderson, as I said in answer to Mr. Voigt's question, that from the reports which were made to me there was sufficient to justify the Department of Justice in taking action. It was my private opinion, and my official opinion, that the Sherman Antitrust Law was being violated. I say that. The responsibility was upon me, as Attorney General of the United States, to decide how that violation should be remedied. I believed that responsibility was one which I should approach with due regard for the public interest.. I could not decide that these men were guilty. I could not decide that a decree should be entered against them. I could only decide that there was sufficient to justify the Government in asking that one or the other of those things be done. I decided that proposition, and I am content to stand upon that record as having been a decision in the public interest, beyond all question.

If I had proceeded in the criminal courts against these men, I might, and I might not, have obtained a conviction. If I had obtained a conviction, what would the people have had? The satisfaction of knowing three or four or five or six men had gone to the penitentiary. What I was trying to do was to work out some reconstruction problems in America, to try to get back to the normal level of things and accomplish some good for the public; not to punish a few individuals.

Forgive me if I have wandered from the question.

Mr. ANDERSON. The only question there is about it is this. If the defendants were permitted to violate the prior decree without pun ishment and the only punishment there could be in either case would be to send them to jail for contempt-what reason is there to assume that you have done anything in getting another decree?

Attorney General PALMER. The prior decree was a very narrow decree which bound only the parent companies in the matter of restraining them from dividing up territory in the distribution of their product, and even then permitted them to grow upon the percentages of distribution in order to avoid waste in distribution centers. It was a decree which would be extremely difficult of enforcement under the present facts and circumstances, and I never even considered going into court to try to enforce it.

That was not an effective remedy. The effective remedy was a new process, either a criminal process or a new injunctive process. And the fact that one decree, entered 17 years ago, is of such a narrow kind that it can not be enforced is certainly no evidence that this decree can not or will not be enforced.

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, it seems to me that if there was a violation of that decree and the violation did not lead to any results, it raises somewhat of a presumption of the ineffectiveness of a decree to accomplish anything, at least so far as these particular defendants are concerned.

Attorney General PALMER. Well, there have been many decrees entered by many courts, probably, which have not been enforced, but that raises no presumption whatever that the United States courts are without power to enforce their decrees. To say that this decree is ineffective because it can not be enforced is to impeach the very power of the United States. Can it be that with the Government behind its Federal courts a judgment of a Federal court is not going to be enforced in America? Why, it is not arguable.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Michigan. No one disputes the power of the Government to enforce its decrees. Mr. Anderson just suggested that the power of the Government had not been used; that there had been a plain violation of one decree, and that this power that you speak of, although there, had not been used; and he was asking what assurance we would have that the power of the Government that you emphasize so would be used in enforcing the other decree.

Attorney General PALMER. Well, the answer is that as between two remedies the Department of Justice chose an effective remedy, not an ineffective and futile remedy.

Is there anything else, Mr. Anderson?

Mr. ANDERSON. I do not just see why the remedy is any more futile in the case of the other decree than it is in the case of this decree. After all, it is putting men in jail, that is the remedy. All you can do

if somebody violates this decree is to put somebody in jail. All you could do if somebody violated the other decree was to put them in jail. Attorney General PALMER. Whom would we have put in jail? Mr. ANDERSON. The defendants, whoever they were. Attorney General PALMER. Well, they were corporations. Mr. ANDERSON. Well, you could have fined them.

Attorney General PALMER. Would that be an effective remedy, to fine one of these corporations a few million dollars? Mr. ANDERSON. I do not think so.

Attorney General PALMER. I do not either; I agree with you. Now, we have got individuals along with the corporations as defendants, and we can do other things to them.

Mr. ANDERSON. It is my recollection that there were some individual defendants involved in this other decree; I am not certain as to that. I believe a number of them were the same persons who are enjoined by the present decree. However, I will pass that.

I was interested in your discussion of the matter of fish. I understood you to say that fish was one of the things which the defendants were prohibited from doing business in. What distinction did you make between fish, for instance, and poultry, in determining that fish should be included in the prohibited articles and poultry excluded? Attorney General PALMER. Well, the natural distinction is, I think, that poultry is more nearly a meat product than fish, although I suppose both are meat in a sense. Poultry is a part of the butcher's stock in trade; every butcher sells beef and chickens, but they do not often sell both beef and fish.

Mr. ANDERSON. The reason you gave was that if a man did not want to eat meat for the reason that it was the subject of a monopoly he could eat fish. Now, if he did not want to eat beef he might want to eat poultry or eggs

Attorney General PALMER. Well, poultry is meat.

Mr. ANDERSON. It is in competition with beef.

Attorney General PALMER. I could not carry that to the extent of taking them out of the beefsteak business and leaving them in the roast beef business. I had to stop somewhere.

Mr. ANDERSON. I do not think that is quite an answer to the question.

Attorney General PALMER. Mr. Anderson, I do not believe I ever could have gotten the defendants to the point where they would have stood for a decree that would have taken them out of the butter and eggs business at this stage of the proceedings.

Mr. ANDERSON. I believe you discussed the advantages of this decree from the standpoint of the regulation of the packing business as distinguished from regulation by legislation. Now, if this decree does go beyond the law, that is, if it prohibits things that are lawful now, to that extent it is legislation, is it not?

Attorney General PALMER. Oh, well; I would hardly say that. Mr. ANDERSON. What I am getting at is this. It is contended in all these answers, at least in some of them, that it was an economic thing for the packers to engage in the grocery business?

Attorney General PALMER. Yes.

Mr. ANDERSON. And that depriving them of the power or the right to engage in the grocery business was economically unsound and would result in increased cost to the consumer. Now, was it not a

legislative question whether or not Congress desired to prohibit them fron engaging in the grocery business, or was it a judicial question?

Attorney General PALMER. Well, Mr. Anderson, you quoted from the defendants' answers. Now, the Government alleged that tie going into side lines was inimical to the public interest, was potential with the kind of danger against which the Sherman Antitrust Law enacted, and justified a decree of the court, restraining them. That was the Government's position.

Now, the court did not fix its decree upon the defendants' answers, I do not care what the defendants said in their answers. The court found this decree based upon the pleadings, as Mr. McLaughlin said, and he found enough in it to justify either one position or the other, and he entered the consent decree.

Mr. ANDERSON. The statement has been made before this committee over and over again that this decree restrains the defendants from doing things which are lawful for them to do, that it goes beyond the law. Do you admit that is true?

Attorney General PALMER. What I have said, Mr. Anderson, is this, that the decree contains provisions which it would never have been possible for me to get in an adverse proceeding against these defendants, that either the fact or the law was involved in such doubt that I could not have hoped to get that kind of decree. But when I secure the consent decree, the allegations in the record easily support it. I do not think the charge could be made that Judge McCoy is usurping the powers of Congress in legislating in this decree, any more than any other decree legislates when it applies old princi-. ples to new conditions.

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, you purpose to set up a regulatory body in your office, by which you shall determine whether there is a violation. of the law or not?

Attorney General PALMER. Oh, certainly not. I propose to set up an organization which will assist the court in performing a duty which has been laid upon the court ever since there was a court of equity. There is no new regulatory body raised in this business. A court of equity is as old as the Republic, and its decision must hold as to whether there has been a violation of the decree or not. All I am doing is raising an organization to help the people who make complaints to go before that court and ask for justice.

Mr. ANDERSON. Is it your expectation that this bureau will hear complaints of those who claim there is a violation of that decree, and if you find the complaints are supported by evidence you will apply to the court for a modification of the decree or enforcement or enforcement of the provisions?

Attorney General PALMER. If the Attorney General finds it is a proper case to go into court on, he will go. That is not a new thing. That is not a new program. That is the way the Department of Justice has been run since there was one.

Mr. ANDERSON. I had in mind how far the provisions of this decree were less drastic or more drastic than some of the remedies that have been proposed in pending legislation.

Attorney General PALMER. Well, I have not examined the remedies. in the proposed legislation enough to compare them. I think this decree is a drastic decree; but the power which is to be exercised